THE NEW STATESMAN

What Greta Thunberg’s arrest means

INDIA BOURKE

“It really looks like Mordor,”

Said Greta Tunberg … a …“mud wizard” robed in a hooded brown cloak appeared to taunt police officers trying to pull their boots loose from the water-logged ground…

The comparison to The Lord of the Rings may seem trite at a time when the stakes are so high. To its supporters, the mine is essential to Germany’s energy security following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

To its opponents… Mordor comparisons are “nice metaphors”... a German civil disobedience movement... told the New Statesman, “ we are fighting in reality, in the real world of capitalism... Tolkien wrote that “the old world will burn in the fire of industry”, and a burning world indeed awaits if coal mining isn’t stopped...